Courtesy Michael Stevenson Gallery; © Guy Tillim

Guy Tillim, "Supporters of Jean-Pierre Bemba line the road as he walks to a rally from the airport, Kinshasa" (2006). Digital pigment print, 28 3/8 x 19 1/2 in.

February 2009 Field Guide

Roni Horn

"Where in the World?"

Paper Cuts: 200 Years of Black Paper Dolls

Gedi Sibony

Charles Darwin

Dan Graham

"The Dirty Hands"

Yayoi Kusama

Year of Fashion

Isabelle Cornaro

Apichatpong Weerasethakul

Sophie Ristelhueber

Santiago Sierra

Glenn Brown

August Sander Leo Rubinfien Yto Barrada Expert’s Eye: Rick Wester Stieglitz the Greatest Photographer of the 20th Century? German Photo Prize Goes to Wolfgang Tillmans Gallery to Host Cairo’s First Live Auction of Contemporary Art Andreas Gefeller in New York

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Taking inspiration from the indexical People of the 20th Century, August Sander’s legendary portraits of Germans in the 1920s, curator Sandra S. Phillips has selected four contemporary photographers who similarly pursue Sander’s quest to expose their zeitgeist through ordinary subjects. Judith Joy Ross has documented the sparse gatherings of antiwar protesters in America. Young idealists, older retirees, or average joes, they stand on sidewalks or plazas, facing the nation’s indifference. Guy Tillim, who lives in Cape Town, examines the urge for change in Africa, photographing volatile elections and small villages where change has come faster than expected. Similarly, Yto Barrada looks to her native Morocco to record the increased focus on tourism. Leo Rubinfien has the unenviable task of flying to sites of recent terrorist attacks — or "freelance warfare," as he dubs it. Snapping shots of the citizens of Cairo, Tel Aviv, Jakarta, or London, he captures their newfound vulnerability and unease.

sfmoma.org

"The Face of Our Time" originally appeared in the February 2009 issue of Modern Painters. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Modern Painters' February 2009 Table of Contents.